explanation of this part - load balancer

Question

Hello,

I need an explanation of this part about the load balancer use:

What is Azure Load Balancer? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/intro-to-azure-load-balancer/2-what-is-azure-load-balancer)

Some applications have so much incoming traffic that the single server hosting them becomes overwhelmed and can't respond to client requests in a timely manner. Instead of continuously adding network capacity, processors, disk resources, and RAM, you can address this traffic by implementing load balancing. Load balancing is a process in which you distribute incoming traffic equitably across multiple computers.

What is the meaning of this highlighted in bold? Does it mean that all these are being added virtually, online using VMs because practically in an on-prem this would incur more capex charges.

Kindly, please explain.

Marouf

Answer 1

Hi Marouf,

It means instead of switching to a more powerful Azure VM size (more cores, more RAM, etc.), you add additional VMs and spread the load across them. The first is known as "Vertical Scaling" and the second is "Horizontal Scaling".

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Thanks.

-TP